It might seem risky to disrupt a power network. Nonetheless, welcome change is coming to Cambodia’s electricity system. Just as emails have disrupted postal services and personal computers have disrupted typing pools, new technologies are remaking the electricity industry. If authorities seize the moment, Cambodia can leapfrog over current problems and be at the forefront of the transformation. Power systems need to get smarter not bigger. Electricity can now be produced where it is consumed. Centralised mega-plants are being by-passed. And digital technologies are changing the power business.

​Many people reading this have, most likely, never personally experienced real chronic hunger. And, as the author, I will admit neither have I. I fondly recall my first visit to Cambodia as a tourist. It was a family holiday and we went to Siem Reap. It seems like a lifetime ago, long before I joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and while I do recall noticing that some people were poor, I now wonder if I had also realised that some people were undernourished. Back then, I don’t think I had.